Fact-Checker Rates Clinton’s Truthfulness After Fox Interview

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was given the Washington Post’s highest rating for “whoppers” after claiming in a Fox News interview that FBI Director James Comey said her many claims during investigations into her email were “truthful.”

Clinton was asked by host Chris Wallace about her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. He noted that Comey contradicted Clinton’s claims to the American people that she never sent or received classified material .

“FBI Director James Comey said none of those things that you told the American public were true,” Wallace said.

“That’s not what I heard Director Comey say … Director Comey said that my answers were truthful and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails,” she said.

The Washington Post fact-checked Clinton’s response, and gave her a “Four Pinocchio” rating for untruthfulness, their highest scale for not telling the truth and one the Post reserves for “whoppers.”

“Clinton is cherry-picking statements by Comey to preserve her narrative about the unusual setup of a private email server. This allows her to skate past the more disturbing findings of the FBI investigation” wrote Glenn Kessler in the Post’s Fact Checker column.

In fact, Comey said the FBI concluded that Clinton and her aides “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Comey said “seven email chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending emails about those matters and receiving emails from others about the same matters.”

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In his July 5 statement in the FBI investigation, Comey also said “There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”

The Post concluded that Clinton’s answer was in line with how she typically responds to tough questions about her record, particularly concerning her email.

“As we have seen repeatedly in Clinton’s explanations of the email controversy, she relies on excessively technical and legalistic answers to explain her actions,” Kessler wrote.